o
that. Do your business, but you shall not bind me." The king resisted.
The executioners called for help. A scene of violence was about to
ensue. The king turned his eye to his confessor, as if for counsel.
"Sire," said the Abbe Edgeworth, "submit unresistingly to this fresh
outrage, as the last resemblance to the Savior who is about to
recompense your sufferings." Louis raised his eyes to heaven, and said,
"Assuredly there needed nothing less than the example of the Savior to
induce me to submit to such an indignity." He then reached his hands out
to the executioners, and said, "Do as you will; I will drink the cup to
the dregs." Leaning upon the arm of his friend, he ascended the steep
and slippery steps of the guillotine; then, walking across the platform
firmly, he looked for a moment intently upon the sharp blade of the ax,
and turning suddenly to the populace, exclaimed, in a voice clear and
distinct, which penetrated to the remotest extremities of the square,
"People, I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge. I pardon
the authors of my death, and pray God that the blood you are about to
shed may never fall again upon France. And you, unhappy people--" Here
the drums were ordered to beat, and the deafening clamor drowned his
words. The king turned slowly to the guillotine and surrendered himself
to the executioners. He was bound to the plank. "The plank sunk. The
blade glided. The head fell."

One of the executioners seized the severed head of the monarch by the
hair, and, raising the bloody trophy of their triumph, showed it to the
shuddering throng, while the blood dripped from it on the scaffold. A
few desperadoes dipped their sabers and the points of their pikes in the
blood, and, waving them in the air, shouted "Vive la Republique!" The
multitude, however, responded not to the cry. Explosions of artillery
announced to the distant parts of the city that the sacrifice was
consummated. The remains of the monarch were conveyed on a covered cart
to the cemetery of the Madeleine, and lime was thrown into the grave
that the body might be speedily and entirely consumed.

Over the grave where he was buried Napoleon subsequently began the
splendid Temple of Glory, in commemoration of the monarch and other
victims who fell in the Revolution. The completion of the edifice was
frustrated by the fall of Napoleon. The Bourbons, however, on their
restoration to the throne, finished the building, and it is now cal